I looked after my husband during the last few months of his life and had to carry out a number of things I was not trained to do, often due to being let down by district nurses and carers. During that time, I know I said things I didn’t mean and could be short tempered.
I want to thank all of you for your honesty in writing about your experiences whilst looking after your partners. This has really helped me. I have felt so guilty and beaten myself up many times, remembering the bad ‘stuff’. I know that I did all I could and was also told that I could not have have done any more. My husband knew and worried about me, but it hasn’t stopped me feeling guilty for saying the odd harsh word, when tired and really frustrated and anxious for him.
I realise more than ever that feeling guilty is part of grief. I don’t suppose I shall stop remembering but hopefully it won’t feel so bad.
Hey Danpat,
Your 24 years away was a way of demonstrating how much sacrifice you were willing to make for love, I am sure your darling partner understood this, and knew it was all part of a greater plan, and you can only plan for what you can foresee. I think it is typical for us to go through a regret or bargaining phase in grief.
For me, I regret not being tougher on my partner and making her go for checks after her first bout of Cancer, but she was stubborn, and, there was of course denial, as in, no, it’s all been cut away so there should be no reason to be unduly worried, sounds so naive now, we were blind to what was diagnosed, I feared it would be Cancer, but what I didn’t expect was the word ‘incurable’, that floored us both and we weeped together after the hospital visit.
You are not alone in thinking back and thinking ‘if only…’, but as couples we make decisions, we never expect our loved ones to be taken as early in life.
Your darling would have known how much you loved her, and as you say, you were able to re-affirm that in those final months.
As you say time is most important, and this is what you must afford yourself, time will not heal us, we won’t move on, but time will allow us to move forward, and your concerns are natural from what I have read about the stages of grief.
Bless you, don’t beat yourself up, be kind to yourself, as humans we make life decisions based on what we know, not what we fear, otherwise we would do nothing.
Take care
I’m really pleased to hear that,maybe for me it’s just a case of it being too early and clearly what works or doesn’t work for one varies with someone else. Take care and keep fighting.
How long is it since you lost your wife ? Is it fairly recent ? Because if so youre bound to be really upset 
X
9 weeks into this journey since husband passed. My friend called me to see me today but was having a bad day and burst into tears. It is so hard sometimes the loneliness and fear of living a live without your partner hits out if the blue
My friend saw my unhappiness and asked me to have dinner with them tonight. Such good friend’s are hard to come by now. Kindness understanding and support from others is essential to help us get through the hard days. Take care
Yep let down by district nurses ! Know that one ! Ha ! They just love sticking everything on you as the carer dont they ! What a disaster our NHS is at moment !! And it dont help they keep striking either ! I dont think them drs should be allowed to strike ! They serve a vital public roll !! The police arent allowed to strike so why should they !!
Danpat the advice i can give you is take one step at a time.dont be afraid to reach out and ask for help.also dont lock yourself away from friends.one of our friends has started taking me out for a drink on Saturday afternoons at a local bikers pub which i have to admit it has started to make feel a bit better. Been 6 months since sue my gorgeous fantastic beautiful wife took her final journey
Jax - something I have come to understand - not that I like it nor want it - but to understand - is not to confuse ‘getting over this’ with ‘moving forward’.
I will never ever ever ‘get over’ losing my beautiful wife A so dramatically and tragically at the age of 54. Never. And in truth - I will not want to.
I still love miss and adore A now as much as our blessed 30 years together (school sweethearts!) and always will.
I don’t consider myself a ‘widower’ - I still refer to myself as married to A and will always wear my ring exactly where A so kindly and generously placed it on my left hand back in 1993.
I still talk to A numerous times each and every day and sit with her in her dressing room where her urn rests. I cry often and unexpectedly whenever it comes or I want to.
But I am now seeing I need to move forward. I have a very vulnerable 21 year old son who this experience has shattered. I have a duty of care and responsibility now to provide a stable home and recovery for this young man as A fully expects me to.
So I will go forwards.
For me - once the stress of the funeral passed - and I got A home finally - I found you very quickly become yesterdays news. For others life goes on as before with holidays etc.
I am happy with that. And for them.
Routine and work had helped me. I am a stickler for list writing and forward planning and this helps stabilise me when I start to ‘rock and sway’ due to events.
I don’t know what my future holds. Nobody does. But A will be right there beside me every day and every night of it. As I want her to be. So yes I am slowly moving forward - gradually adapting and evolving to this new lonely world - but I am not looking to get over this. And I neither need to to function nor want to.
So don’t be confused. They are 2 different things.
Right - it’s a beautiful sunny day here in Fife. I have fed the dog - done 2 washings and am about to go out for a quick shopping with a cheeky Morrisons breakfast as it’s my day off! Then I will get my wife an anniversary card as it IS - present tense - IS - our 30th anniversary later this week.
Nothing has changed that and never will.
Warmest thoughts. You’re doing wonderfully in the circus of hurt. You are going forwards even if you don’t know it yet.
And we here in this awful club are all here to support you!
M
Morning @Martyn2
Thank you for your message and i am very lucky and have some amazing friends around me. I can get out and i am not locked away but i know that this is all a front. Please ask are you ok and i say " if i say i am ok , then i am ok" because if i say something enough times then it becomes the truth. At the moment it is a lie but i do not need to show that i just need to keep saying it.
@Deb5 Patricia passed on the 15th July and we had her funeral on the 4th Aug. I just keep doing stuff, to keep myself busy.
The funeral was what kept me going and with 160 people there on the day it took some planning. Now that has finished i just find things to do because if i dont then i cry and miss her so much that it hurts. So keeping busy doesnt stop t but it slows it down.
Too true i have woken up and it looks lovely outside shining birds singing. I stay just outside Edinburgh. Plan to get up and do some work in the garden he so much loved. I too consider myself still married and not a widow. It has only been 9 weeks 10 weeks this thursday
Our 36 wedding anniversary is on 28th of this month and i will still send him a card on that special day.
I try to live in the moment as dont know what the future holds
@pgw69 Thank you for the reply,
I can 100% understand when at the doctors and they say incurable. The other issue i had was Patricia was Colombian and although her English was fantastic she looked at me to explain what was going on. That was the start of the many hard things i had to do, tell her that there is nothing that will stop this, tell my kids that their mom is going to die and tell myself to stand and fight. I have never run from a fight but as we all know this is a big one.
One thing now is that i do not need to tell my kids anymore bad news about their mom because there is nothing more that can hurt like it already has.
Danpat,
Oh gosh, you had to translate, bless you, speaking the words again must have been so hard, but you did it, so brave.
This is a fight, a fight of so many emotions, feelings and memories that some days build us, and other days shatter us all over again.
You know you get to ‘bridges’ in your life that are testing, but we always found a way to overcome difficulties, cross one ‘bridge’ at a time, we were resourceful, so now is the shock and realisation that this is last hurdle I cannot find a way round, there are no solutions, just final acceptance of loss that we do not want to accept, but we have no choice.
You have children, and between you I hope you find some comfort in recalling the good times, when appropriate.
Be kind to yourself.
Feeling Lost - your words so resonate with me! I am still married as far as I’m concerned ! I still wear my rings and also his on my other hand. I also have his ashes in a beautiful urn in a cabinet in our lounge. I think some people find that uncomfortable but for me it’s a comfort! When they ask me what I’m going to with his ashes I just tell them he’s staying here with me. If people don’t like it then tough!! I don’t have children still at home but I do have our lovely dog. My husband took him out walking everyday although I went with them most days! That task now belongs to me which to be honest forces me to get up and out as I’m sure some days I just wouldn’t bother! My reason to keep going!
Ah … early days for you then ? Yeh its good to be doing things and having stuff to look forward to but in those early days i just didnt want to see anyone myself … we are all different … i did shut myself away from the world but im getting better now … i go out more … but its still hard this life without our true love … not gonna lie… xxx
Thankyou danpat.my daughter and stepson dave plus family said they know how i feel because of my choice of music playing.
@Galaxy75 I wake each morning before my alarm and look at Patricia`s picture and talk to her. I ask her to hold me and just close my eyes and pretend she is hugging me. I cry then i get up have a shower (cry in the shower). Talk to her picture again as i get dressed, i know that might seem silly but it helps.
It was one month yesterday but it feels like it was yesterday, i miss her with all my heart.
Not one of us knows what the future holds but if i do not move forward then i would let her down. My kids are my main effort and i will do anything for them. She loved her kids with her whole body and hear, so i need to make sure they survive and that is what keeps me going.
@Jax2 It has only been a month since Patricia past and i am not sure it feels real yet. I do know that each day has been a fight and a mixture of happy sad and just simple feeling of emptiness.
She was my world and moving forward without her seems wrong and not something i do not want to do. Everything i have ever done is for my family, the four of us and that was my drive and motivation.
So now that she is not here i am unsure what i do, the kids will move on soon as they both want to join the services. This is something they want to do and i am proud that they are but i am scared when they go. My fear is that i will not have anyone to look after and then i am on my own.
Like you say the “new norm” is not something i want and it does not seem that i will ever be normal again.
Hi again @Danpat . Please remember that its only been one month since your life changed, and thats incredibly early in the journey. I remember those times, now 16 months ago. My mind was in total chaos, I thought my life was going to be like that until it ended, what,'s the point.
All I could do is battle through day by day, being as positive as I could be. I was incredibly lucky in having friends who just turned up and were with me.
Bit by bit, my life rebuilt, I had my plan to guide me, and I put one step in front of another.
Now, 16 months later, I wake up optimistically, looking forward to each day, and Penny is with me all the way. Its not a case of forgetting her and the memories, I can now think of her with a smile, ie just changing my way of thinking.
Rely on your friends you trust to help you through it.
It will be ok, be patient and positive.
As a footnote, yesterday I went for a walk in Sherwood Forest with my two little dogs (and Penny, who I chatted to if nobody was near to listen in)!. They were Penny’s pets, and she doted on them. We had lunch at a cafe in the forest, I met and chatted to several people en route and I had a lovely time, I realised I was happy again. There’s no way I could have imagined I would have felt this way one month after she died. Have faith.
But its time I got out of bed, for breakfast, more walkies, and home to see the Lionesses beat the Aussies!!
